


Words That Need Saying

by Nightly_Refrain



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Tag, F/M, season 3 premiere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightly_Refrain/pseuds/Nightly_Refrain
Summary: Post 3.01 reaction. Felicity said she didn’t want to talk, but since it all went to hell anyway, she’s found she does have some things she needs to say.Canon-divergent.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 14
Kudos: 112





	Words That Need Saying

**Author's Note:**

> Basically just a fic to air my thoughts on 3.01. Also tweaked Season 3 canon because I could.

It’s been about two weeks since everything in Felicity’s life jumped off a cliff—thankfully not literally because she’s had enough heights in her life, thank you very much, but still. She should have known everything had been going suspiciously well.

First there had been the getting blown up portion of the evening. Followed by Oliver deciding to take back the hope he’d given her, in his typical self-sacrificing way, but not before giving her the saddest, most glorious goodbye kiss she’d ever received.

Then Thea was back in town and so was a very badly injured Sara because Thea’d been brainwashed into attacking her by Malcolm fucking Merlyn of all people, who just refused to die. Seriously, was Felicity going to have to arrow him herself? She hoped not because that would not go well.

They finally got Sara in a stable condition, Thea seemed to be coming around, and then Malcolm was back and Sara’s scary assassin girlfriend was trying to kill him, which Felicity was honestly all for, but not at the cost of turning her city into a ninja battleground.

Luckily, it seemed like Nyssa’s capture of the man last night was sticking, seeing as the team just bundled them both off onto a plane bound for wherever the frak secret assassin headquarters was for some sort of trial, which Felicity needs to know nothing about except that Malcom Merlyn is never coming back to Starling. Even Thea hadn’t objected—your birth dad using you as a human weapon to kill your friend to save his own ass in some sort stupid convoluted plan will do that to your relationship, she guessed.

So today she’s finally had some time to breathe and think, was where she’d been going with this all. She was methodically shutting down all her extra panic programs to get back to their standard crime searches and she was letting her mind drop those ‘League of Assassins-Malcom Merlyn’ constant worries too.

It was interesting what happened when you shoved everything to the back of your mind so you could focus on ridiculous, how does my life involve this many assassins and leather and betrayal, things. When you finally get back to the more run of the mill “love of your life breaking up with you before you could even properly be together for your own good” problems—it put things in perspective. Distracting herself from one problem with another sometimes was just the mental break she needed to look at the original problem with new eyes.

It wasn’t that Felicity hadn’t been worried Oliver had thoughts like that before he voiced them; it had been one of the reasons she thought they would never get together, when she wasn’t positive he’d never return her feelings. She was fully aware of his whole ‘I can’t be with anyone I care about’ and other self-sacrificing bullshit. She just thought, after he’d asked her out, he must have gotten somewhat past them and that when he did have a relapse, it’d be after they’d built more of a foundation as an actual couple—not before their first date even finished.

It had been going so well too. She’d still been sort of convinced the whole thing was too good to be true. She’d never really expected Oliver would ever have feelings for her, not like that. Even after everything with Slade, once she’d had a good night’s sleep she realized that the reason his “I love you” had read as true was because he loved her like a friend, like they loved Digg. So she’d buried the tangle of feelings that had been thrust to the forefront of her mind when suddenly the deeply buried wants she’d been denying had jumped at the hint they might get realized.

It had been fine, they’d been back to business as usual when suddenly there he was, asking her out on a date, a _date_ -date. The restaurant had been wonderful, and he’d been adorable, both with his momentary sentence fragments and with his own nerves. Those things he’d said to her, had been so sweet and sincere. They’d convinced her that this was really happening, that they might really be able to build something together, even stronger than their partnership.

Then there was a loud noise and it all faded to black. She wasn’t sure how long it took for her to catch up with everything that’d happened while she was out, but there was a sinking feeling in her gut, even before she’d looked into his eyes and seen that he’d already changed his mind.

She’d tried to act like she didn’t notice, tried to focus on Digg and Lyla and the baby. Then he’d said those fateful words, ended them before they began. And she’d had to decide what to do next, or rather, what not to do. She stood by what she’d said at the moment, but now…

“Oliver?” she heard herself saying, her mind knowing she needed to get it out there before she backed down. “Can we talk?”

“Sure, what…” The words dry up in his mouth as he took her in, the look in her eyes, the set of her jaw. He was suddenly aware that they’re alone, Digg and Roy both gone home, Sara with Nyssa. Oliver knew exactly what she wanted to talk about just from her tone of voice, “Oh. Alright. I thought you…”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it because I could see you’d made up your mind and I didn’t want to talk and have you not listen.” Felicity gave a little shrug, hoping her voice didn’t break as she spoke. “Couldn’t bare it, I guess. I decided since you were determined to break my heart, I wouldn’t let you break everything.”

Her voice remained steady but evidently Oliver could read the pain in her eyes just fine. He gave her guilty, sad eyes as he looked down at her, “Felicity…I…”

She gave a raw laugh and threw up her hands as she barreled on, “You did anyway, so you know what?” She remembered why she had decided to do this, and her voice gained confidence, “I _do_ have some things to say. And you are going to listen to them. Because you owe me that much.”

Oliver reluctantly nodded and braced himself, mentally and physically, leaning against the medical table behind him, as if grounding himself to the memory of her laying on it, bloody and hurt because of him, would help. He barely said no to her last time, he wasn't sure he could take her actively trying to persuade him. He’d always known he was weak.

Felicity’s eyes narrowed in a way that suggested she knew what he was thinking, but she didn’t comment on it, instead her gaze briefly focused on something behind him, clearly trying to decide where to start. Oliver took advantage of the opportunity to just look at her and breathe.

It had been a hard few weeks, but everything seemed to have worked out as well as could be expected, which meant of course the other shoe was going to drop. He’d hoped it wouldn’t be this one, because throughout this entire crisis he’d been torn between being glad Felicity and him weren’t trying to navigate a new relationship and aching for what could have been like a missing limb he’d never knew he had until it was gone.

“The lesson you took from that whole incident is that you shouldn’t date,” Felicity said bluntly, deciding the best course of action was just to jump in. “The lesson I take from it is that we need to be more careful about searching anyone who goes into the field for bugs and trackers more carefully. Perhaps in a different abandoned warehouse than our base and not going directly from Arrow business to regular business.”

“I agree,” Oliver nodded, because it was a good point. They very the routes the team took back to Verdant, but adding a pit stop to ensure everyone was free of tracers was a very good idea. “We should do that.”

“But you still think that the torpedo should have an impact on your dating choices,” Felicity said, reading between the lines. “Even though it could have been shot at your house or the Foundry or the office. And you don’t avoid those places.”

“Felicity, it doesn’t matter where it happened, the point still stands.” And Oliver knew he couldn’t shut her out of the Team Arrow life, he could only stop Oliver Queen from dating her so that’s what he’ll do.

Felicity should have known logic wasn’t going to work. His reasons for them being together weren’t logical after all. He wasn’t with her for messy emotional reasons, which meant she was going to have to really make the decision about what she was going to share. Felicity was bad at sharing, sharing real emotional things at least. And did she really want to open herself up to him, just to be rejected again?

She looked down at her hands, studying the fresh coat of purple polish that adorned them. He said he loved her. If that was true, if he was resisting them being together despite his feelings, then it should be safe to tell him, to trust him with this. Just because his scars were visible enough to ask about, didn't mean she should get a free pass at keeping her own past trauma off the table. She couldn’t ask him to give to her, share with her, and not reciprocate.

She remembered his words in the restaurant before everything went wrong. At least a part of him had believed in them enough to get them there, to that moment, and had said those words. How could she not return the sentiment?

Felicity broke the silence almost without realizing she’d made the decision to do so. Her eyes didn’t leave her fingers as she said softly, “You know, I once made a similar choice. The whole, my actions and the involvement of my loved ones in my life lead to death and there’s too much danger in getting close to people, blah blah blah.” She waved a dismissive hand, a sardonic, sad smile on her face as she looked up and stared behind him into the darkness of the Foundry, “Of course, I made the choice after it was already my fault that my boyfriend was dead, so not exactly the same. Congrats on being more proactive than college me, I guess.”

Oliver didn’t know what he expected her to say after the contemplative, tentative silence that had fallen when she laid out her first few reasons. Nothing could have prepared him for this. He knew Felicity kept things to herself, had been vaguely aware of it before, but after the thing with his mother when she announced her run, when Felicity asked point blank if he’d noticed she didn’t talk about her family. It’d brought it more to the forefront of his mind.

He had noticed before then, as he’d said, but after, he realized how much else she kept back. He’d still been trying to figure out what she buried within herself and why, when everything with Slade had boiled to a head. This was not something he could have predicted. How could Felicity have gotten her boyfriend killed in college?

Felicity continued to speak, “After Cooper died because of what I had made, I decided that I didn’t get to live a full life, that depending on other people for help, for happiness, wasn’t sustainable and that I was dangerous, too smart for my own good.” She took a deep breath and smoothed down her ponytail unconsciously, “So I changed myself into someone who could stand on her own and be on her own, without anyone else. Someone who fit into the background.”

“And I stopped,” Felicity frowned as she admitted it out loud for the first time, remembered those years after Cooper died. “Stopped reaching out for meaningful connection, stopped doing the one thing I’m so good at its ridiculous because all that lead to was pain and collateral damage. I may have brought down one person, but I wasn’t going to bring down anyone else.”

Oliver wasn’t sure how hacking lead to her boyfriend’s death but he was fairly certain he was following the path she laid out, even with the missing pieces. It did explain something that had always bothered him, why she’d been in QC’s IT support department instead of a more important position with cyber security. After all she had a double masters from MIT: she was more qualified than most people in her department and her skill outclassed them all.

Felicity gave a sigh, “All my dreams about changing the world with my code were thrown away. And they deserved to be because clearly all I would do was hurt people with it. So I graduated and took a safe job in IT support instead of cyber security or software programming or starting my own company. Somewhere I could do the least damage. And I kept myself there, hidden away, for years. I planned to do so indefinitely.”

“What happened?” Oliver asked, unable to keep the question to himself, unable to resist the chance to learn more about this fascinating woman he loved. He was also following why she was telling him this, because yeah, this all did seem pretty much what he’d been accepting about his own life. “What changed your mind?”

Felicity finally met his eyes and the look in them made his heart stop. She gave a small smile, tilting her head to the side, “You did.” She said it like it was obvious, like it was a happy thing, and Oliver didn’t know what to do with that. “You came to my desk with a mystery and the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard in my life. And everything had been so, so _normal_ for so long and I’d buried my head in the sand at that stupid job and told myself it was all fine, that I was okay. But I wasn’t.”

“Because if I was, I wouldn’t have taken the laptop from you. I wouldn’t have let that lie slip by without comment. I told myself that stuff like this didn’t happen to me, not the new me who’s most exciting, thrilling night was some new show on Netflix, and so, one interesting day, one little taste of hacking would be fine.” She could still hear the justifications she’d thrown around in her head. “That I’d be fine. It was basically just some data recovery, not a big deal at all.”

“Then Walter came to me with his own mystery and I told myself the same thing, that it was my job and he was my boss, so looking into the shady money transfer wasn’t about my desire to get back into hacking, it was just the job, just part of my safe IT support job. I could do this little bit and it would just be a distant memory a year later.”

She shook her head at her past self. “All just excuses really.”

“But you,” she looked back up at him and he held his breath for what she would say next. “You kept coming back with new mysteries and challenges and you would get this smile on your face as you spouted just, complete nonsense and I …” Felicity looked off into the distance, a small smile on her face as she remembered him, coming to her visit her, flirting with her, needing her help, making more terrible excuses she could tell he knew she didn’t believe. “I let myself get charmed, just a little. To see what it felt like to live again, do what I did best, better than anyone else.”

Felicity’s eyes meet his once again, blue on blue, and hers were shinning in a way he’d never really seen. “And you called me remarkable for it.”

“Even when you confirmed the suspicion that had been forming in the back of my mind, when you asked me to join up, I knew I didn’t trust myself with this,” she waved at their set-up, “but I also knew I couldn’t say “no” either, already I couldn’t walk away. So I tried to be cautious, tried to say it was only until we found Walter. Told myself I could walk away after that.”

“It didn’t take long before I realized I was already in too deep and I knew, between both the work and you and Digg, my first real friends in a long time, it was too late.”

She took a deep breath before saying, “After the Undertaking…while you were gone and the city was stitching itself back together, I did a lot of thinking.” She reached up and adjusted her glasses, remembering that summer and its hardships, before the danger had gotten so, so personal. “About what we did and if it was worth it, if we were even doing any good in the end. It was hard to believe with 503 people on my conscience, but I reminded myself that we had stopped one of the devices. How many more would have died without our interference? Without us doing all we could. My brain understood that much, even if my heart was still full of guilt.”

She looked at him, steel in her gaze. “So I made my choice then, even more than when I decided to stay here when it all went down. Because I like having a purpose. I like feeling like I’m making a real difference,” she explained. Her voice filled with something close to awe or surprise, “I’ve never really had that before, but its probably one of my favorite things about my life now. And that’s because it really is a life, not just passing time, keeping myself on the sidelines as some sort of penance for mistakes I made years ago. Doing this work, our work: that’s helping, that’s how we give back.” The conviction in her voice was impossible to ignore and furthermore, he agreed with her. He was always surprised at how similar their thoughts could be. Even if he still didn’t think she had anything to make up for, he couldn't deny that what she was saying was right.

“I am aware this life has its dangers,” her voice was determined again, he could see her circling back to what this whole conversation was really about. “But I decided then that it was worth it, that you were worth it. Both the danger to myself and the danger to our team.”

“You risk your life every time you go out on patrol, whether you acknowledge it or not. Do you think after all we’ve been through, I’m not aware of these facts?” she raised an eyebrow. “That I don’t know every night I could hear you die over the coms? Because I gave you wrong directions or missed something on the cameras or because of dumb, bad luck.”

“That’s the price to save lives, to save the city.”

“Do you know what would happen if you died tomorrow?” Felicity asked, her voice deliberately calm. “Beyond mourning you, I’d continue to do this,” she gestured vaguely to their setup, “because it matters to me, because I believe in our mission.

“Obviously, I don’t dwell on it,” Felicity gave a little shrug. “No use in it because at the end of the day, we make the choice to come back here and do it all over again. My life, my choice. And I’m going to keep making that choice. Good thing too, because let’s face it, you guys wouldn’t last more than a few weeks without me.

“Days,” Oliver admitted. He gave an indulgent, sheepish smile, “I don’t think we last more than a couple days.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said, with a real smile. “I was trying to be generous.” Then her gaze focused, “I’m one third of this partnership and that puts me in danger. Personally, I think whatever increase in danger I might get due to being in a relationship with you, isn’t as large as you think. –And,” she cut him off before he can even open his mouth, “I think the benefits of having you in my bed every night is more than worth it.”

“I’m sorry that you don’t. That you don’t have faith in us,” she cut him off before he could say anything, noticing the way his mouth opened to protest. “You can say it’s the world you don’t trust, but we take on the world every day. When we fight crime or just when we drive to work. I’m not saying we can’t be better, but I’m saying we’ve got a good enough track record so far. We’re still here, we still survived.”

“I want to live though,” her voice had a hint of wistfulness to it, her eyes a little unfocused as she thought about the future she wanted, the life she wanted to have. “You’ve given me a taste for it and I refuse to go back to just scraping by.”

Her eyes were suddenly focused back on his own, “So I have request. I don’t want a goodbye kiss,” she said, determination evident in every inch of her frame. “I want you to give me a real one. If you still think we’re not worth it, then I won’t try to change your mind again. Because the person who says “no” always decides. But we deserve an actual chance. I deserve that much. We both do.”

“Felicity…” Oliver breathed, unable to say anything except her name because all his defenses seemed to have melted away.

“Oliver…” she replied back while stepping even closer, refusing to break eye contact, until she could practically feel the heat of his body.

“I love this life and I love you,” Felicity admitted, placing a hand over his heart. “And maybe I’m selfish, but I want them both.” Then she leaned up and kissed him.

Her lips were soft, the pressure gentle, and part of Oliver wanted to resist. Because Felicity was correct, as right as their first kiss had been, it had been a goodbye and as such was, was tinged with sadness and regret and grief. He also knew, if he gave in to this request, if he really learned what it was like to kiss Felicity, he’d never be able to stop.

He let his hand cup the back of her head and he kissed back anyways.

There was no other choice to make.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
